Playing the Farmer: Representations of Rural Life in Vergil's Georgics by Philip Thibodeau. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2011. Pp. iii, 326.

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 193 both emphasized the didactic approach Cicero was now embracing, but also relocated his philosophical work as less public, and thus subsidiary to his political career (212). A Written Republic is a thorough piece of scholarship, and while this review has highlighted the points that fit most coherently within the overall argument of the book, it cannot do justice to the many insights Baraz presents in her reading of Cicero’s philosophical prefaces. While none of Baraz’s interpretations of Cicero’s rhetorical effects are implausible, many of them are arguable and provocative of debate. Her prioritizing of Cicero’s political motives for writing the philosophica, for instance, is also the justification Cicero preferred to publicize; his less public-spirited reasons may have been more important than he sometimes claimed. His failure to write philosophy while exiled in 58 b.c.e. could also be argued to have stemmed from the despair of having been personally abandoned , whereas his later exile from politics left him with more enthusiasm for serious writing projects because he was one of many so excluded. Baraz’s interpretation of the letter couriered by the younger Quintus Cicero (Ad Att. 16.5) as evidence for Cicero’s real belief in the educative nature of his philosophical works is probably fair, but the letter could also have been written in a deliberately self-aggrandizing code intended to pass unnoticed by the snooping Quintus while alerting Atticus’ suspicions in case Cicero ’s other letter, explaining the real situation, went astray. That there are often other ways of reading the evidence does not, however, detract from the importance of such a detailed investigation of the texts. Baraz’s fine-toothed combing of the prefaces leads her to produce an impressively comprehensive analysis which might have been fruitfully expanded into a longer book. Baraz’s approach, which offers so many ways of accessing Cicero’s possible intent, has the advantage of appealing on multiple levels to her various audiences. Scholars of Ciceronian philosophy will doubtless be her prime audience. But, given its plentiful suggestions on how Cicero intended his works to be understood (as well as the fact that Baraz translates all but a few of her Latin quotations), A Written Republic could also serve as an introduction for Cicero’s philosophica to an educated but non-expert audience. Baraz’s project thus echoes Cicero’s, in that she presents her own sophisticated interpretation of the sources accessibly and persuasively. Bishop's University Catherine Tracy Playing the Farmer: Representations of Rural Life in Vergil's GEORGICS. By Philip Thibodeau. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2011. Pp. iii, 326. In any attempt to interpret Vergil’s Georgics, there are certain big issues which must sooner or later be considered. They are issues that are important to the understanding of any written work, fiction or non-fiction, verse or prose, but seem more than usually central to the comprehension of this complex work. The first of these questions is that of audience: whom does the author expect to read the work? Whom does he envision as the recipient of his words, and what reaction does he anticipate or desire? The next question is of genre: how, exactly, can we categorize this work, and why? The third question, in the case of Latin literature, is, unfortunately, often presented as the consideration of sources: whence did the concept derive, and how has this particular Latin author adapted an original to serve his own purposes? More appropriately, this final question should be considered one of context: what is the literary 194 PHOENIX and social milieu in which the work under consideration has been created, and how do the work and the context influence each other? These are the questions that Thibodeau takes on in Playing the Farmer, and it is his approach to these issues that provides the greatest value in this very worthwhile book. Thibodeau does especially good work in his exploration of the context of the Georgics, both literary and social. In the first chapter (“Agricolae”), he provides the necessary background and comparative material with other ancient works on agriculture and other works, such as histories, that mention the...